


Up In Smoke

by deliriouslyshipping



Series: T'Cherik Drabbles [12]
Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Nakia is a dick in this, Oops, Shotgunning, Smoking, college party
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 07:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14911142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliriouslyshipping/pseuds/deliriouslyshipping
Summary: “So you’re telling me that you never smoked weed?”





	Up In Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in about an hour, so we'll just see how this goes.

Parties was never T’Challa’s comfortable place, preferring his company to be much more.. Sober and less able to create foolish situations. Yet he is here with Nakia. He figured they would try to rebuild their friendship following their awkward and mutualistic breakup. T’Challa was not the type for casual relationships and Nakia had dreams much bigger than T’Challa could ever allow himself to follow. Nonetheless, she bargained having a lunch if he had come to this party with her.

 

The bass thumps loud, vibrations felt in the core of his chest, and it is hard to hear. T’Challa maneuvers to grab a nonalcoholic drink, but there is a random guy shoving a red cup into his hand with a drunken glee. T’Challa sighs but sips on the burning liquid.

 

He forces his way through the intimate crowd, seating himself on the worn out couch. People pass by him constantly, but he is searching for Nakia. Where did she go? T’Challa barely notices that there is someone standing over him until the man hits at his knee.

 

“Isn’t that a sight, Mr. Perfect at a party.” T’Challa rolls his eyes and pushes himself off of the couch with intention to get away, but Erik is right there, following him because the damned man cannot do anything but agitate him. The drink that he still has flows down his throat a lot easier than the first with Erik’s eyes attached to the ball of his throat. T’Challa coughs uncomfortably and slips between people again to the quiet of the small kitchen.

 

“What brought you here? I know Daddy wouldn’t approve of this.” Erik smiles, teasing, the holden incisors reflecting against the strobe lights.

 

“I am my own man. I do not need Daddy’s permission for anything,” T’Challa corrects sharply, “and I am here for Nakia.” Erik leans towards him on the counter and to anyone else, Erik could just be fucking with him. It doesn’t feel like it though, not with the glossed over eyes or the bite of his lip as he sits himself up on the counter, knocking over all of the red cups in his way, snatching a nearly full one before it falls. Erik chugs at the cup, crushing it under his hand, and T’Challa has no idea why he is not going away and finding his ex.

 

“Nakia left. Found some cute white guy. Think his name was Ben or something” And T’Challa feels his heart drop. Why would Nakia bring him here and lead him on like this? He feels like sulking out and hiding his pain behind his assigned readings, then the anger sets in and he is reaching behind Erik and pouring himself more alcohol. Erik lets out an amused laugh. 

 

“Shit, I ain’t ever see you like this, T.” Erik is amused, T'Challa can hear it, and he snorts behind the cup.

 

“Maybe you should not judge me so much and you would be surprised,” but it is not said out of spite. The room is beginning to look a bit blurrier than it did when he first walked in and Erik is planting his feet on the ground, hand reaching out. The strobe lights in the background resemble moreof Christmas decorations on trees, circular and a bit pixelated on the edges.

 

“Come on then, prove me wrong.” At first, T’Challa is dead scared. Erik would be a fool if he thinks that they would have sex, especially at a party, but the look in Erik’s eyes don’t spell sex or anything of the sorts. It must just be the light buzz beginning to kick it, but it looks more like trust. T’Challa slowly places his hand in Erik’s, and Erik grips it tight as he leads him to a room.

 

There are people sitting on the floor and the room is nothing short of hazy. The strong, overwhelming scent of the smoke makes T’Challa’s throat constrict until he adjusts and his eyes tear up to the change in the atmosphere. He sits himself beside Erik, who is already reaching his hand out for the blunt. T’Challa tries to remember the names of everyone in the room, but he know he can’t because he does not associate with people like this at all. Erik’s friends. Erik. Oh God, why is he here?

 

Erik sucks in the chemicals, lodges it in his throat for a few seconds, before releasing the remaining smoke in the air. He doesn’t know if it is the smoke entering his lungs or the alcohol in his system, but Erik is looking quite attractive in this fashion, especially when he is leaning his head back with a relaxed smile. Pinched between two fingers, Erik nudges the blunt in his directions.

 

“I have.. Never.” T’Challa admits, voice too soft for his own liking. Erik laughs.

 

“I know that, dumbass. Try it.” T’Challa thinks for a few seconds, but the other man is reading the hesitance on his face and begins to pass it to the person beside of him - Jackson, he thinks is the name. He grips at Erik's wrist hurriedly, before the pass is made, and he gnaws at his lip. 

 

“No! I’ll try it, I just don’t know how.”

 

“I got you then.” Erik faces his whole body to him and leans in really close. So close that he can detect the mixture of marijuana and Jack Daniel’s in his breath. T'Challa leans in because he feels like he needs to and is assured by the the small nod Erik gives him. T'Challa can acknowledge the other people in the room, but it is like they are white noise compared to Erik; he is the whole concert at this point with the way that he is looking at him. He can't seem to focus on anything else and the desire pooling in the center of his abdomen makes itself evident. 

 

“So this is called shotgunning, a’ight? It goes in my mouth and I blow it in yours. Easy.” And T’Challa nods like he is taking notes, but he can hear his own heartbeat, fast and without rhythm. He watches as Erik inhales a long drag of the blunt, the rest of the room forgotten. Their eyes connect causing a tingling sensation unlike any drug or alcohol. T’Challa is entranced in the brown of Erik’s eyes, uncaring to the hand placed on his cheek. Erik does not close his eyes when their lips are merely an inch apart, and then he is blowing the smoke into his mouth.

 

T’Challa’s breath hitches as he takes it in. He stills himself because he assuredly be kissing the man if he moves forward any. His throat is burning again and he fights at his body’s urge to halt and cough, focusing more on the change than impulses. All of his senses goes fuzzy, the effects of the alcohol and the weed in his system mixing to something overwhelming, and Erik pulls away from him. When did he close his eyes? He exhales the smoke he unknowingly allowed into his mouth, and T’Challa is by far the most relaxed he has been since.. Man, he can’t even remember or want to think hard enough to remember. He feels lighter, free, and not just from the drugs in his system. 

 

T'Challa isn't held by any expectations in this room, not even of himself. No one cares about who he is or who his family represents. T'Challa is just that. T'Challa. 

 

“You good?” Erik asks, a hand on the outer part his leg. He feels the warmth of it, longs for more of it, more of Erik. He has no idea where this all is coming from - probably some locked away part of him behind the facade he wears always - but the mask feels like it is dripping from its presentation to the world. T’Challa smiles, dopey, and pushes himself forward so that their faces are near each other again.

 

“I am more than good.” He hears the mugginess of his words, the deliberate slur, and he just can’t find it in himself to pull away from Erik. Doesn’t want to. The magnetic attraction drawing him deeper into whatever this is. Erik is pulling away from him.

 

“T, you aren't sober enough-” T’Challa reaches out and grabs the collar of his t-shirt, hauling him back to him. They share a breath.

 

“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t want. I am my own man.” It sounded more sober in his ears and Erik isn’t replying.

 

“Erik, get a damn room if you’re gonna do that shit.” One of the guys in the guys comment, throwing their lighter at the cause of his downfall. Erik throws the lighter back as the blunt has rotates back to them. Erik places his mouth at his ear and T’Challa shivers at the air that rushes past him as Erik speaks.

 

“Later. If you really want it, then later.” Erik pulls away with a look more like a sealed promise and T’Challa will take it. Literally. T’Challa snatches the blunt out of some spurt of confidence and brings it to his lips, intaking the drug. He holds the vapor in the back of his throat in attempt to look somewhat like Erik when he did it. His eyes close again as he exhales the smoke.

 

“Shit,” Erik curses from beside of him, “I’ve ruined you.” Erik smiles beside of him, leaned back, observant. T’Challa forces the excess of the weed to Erik’s direction, speaking with a raspy voice.

 

“Not yet, I suppose.” Their eye lock is nothing but unfiltered want and T’Challa wants to drown in it. Instead, he turns his body and begins to converse with the rest of the circle, figuring he might as well since all of their mouths have been on the same thing now.

 

Erik has him waiting for it. Maybe he is just doing it to give T'Challa time to change his mind. It wasn't like Erik at all, as far as he knows, but T'Challa doesn't really know Erik like that anyway; His history, the way he beds women, is none of his business. Not until the moment T'Challa decided he wants Erik in that way, not like he expects the guy to tell him anyway. 

 

Erik glances over every now and then, as if checking to see if T'Challa is finally going to back out of this. He did not get this far to not finish and even if he did back out, the remainder of their interactions would be nothing but tension infused until they either ignore each other indefinitely or break. In some unspoken agreement, the two of them chose this; they placed the constant agitation that Erik gives T'Challa and the small bickerings over stuff that Shuri would be much more acclimated for, and decided to jump to the part where the past three years of being acquaintances wasn't going to be just enough, always pushing their limits. There is resolution and "later" would have to be it, whether it follows through or not.

 

Conversation spikes between every member of the circle, switching between unpopular opinions and questions never thought of before. It is all interesting, but once it dies down, Erik is nudging him. T’Challa reads the expression on his face and it has him raising an eyebrow.  _Later_ , T’Challa mouths as a question. Erik just smirks, lifting himself off of the floor and helping T’Challa up.

 

“T and I are gonna bounce. I’ll see you later,” and his friends are saying their goodbyes. At the threshold of the door, when the others won’t put forth the effort to pay attention to the two of them, Erik presses himself closer, head ducking in the crook of his neck.

 

“Yes, later.” He replies.

 

There is at least ten things wrong with this and another ten things that T’Challa could be doing that would be more righteous and acceptable by Baba, but right now - with Erik holding his hand for everyone to see as they leave the party and enclosing their bodies against the wall of his dorm room as soon as he steps in - it is very clear. For once, he doesn't have to think about what is going to happen after this or what will become of him and Nakia, if there was even something to salvage. He doesn't think about the meeting with Baba in the morning or the clustered amount of work he has due by the time Monday comes around. T'Challa does not even have to think that each breath that he is taking right now has to productive, worth something, because Erik is right here swallowing his breaths and demanding more. For once, T'Challa is willing to give up the polished, dignified man and just be. 

 

In summary, T’Challa just doesn’t give a fuck right now (well he does, but you know how that goes).


End file.
